


The Unfrozen Heart

by Stranger



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: 1890-1913 classical music, Cross-Generation Relationship, F/F, underground club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2472110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stranger/pseuds/Stranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The widowed Duchess of Denver, finally out of mourning, makes a visit to London and her old friend Mirabelle Severn and Thames.  It's spring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unfrozen Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Angie13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angie13/gifts).



Honoria piloted her recently-acquired Delage motor-carriage to a stop in front of the imposing Georgian mansion that was Severn-and-Thames house in Berkeley Square, London. She pushed up her driving goggles and sat for a moment in the afternoon quiet of Mayfair, contemplating her freedom. She was no longer in mourning for her late husband, this spring of 1913, and she looked forward to a month or more among the society of London. 

In passenger seat, her maid, Franklin, stirred inside her voluminous protective casing of duster, veil, hat and goggles. "M'lady?"

"It's a noisy vehicle," said Honoria, almost approvingly. "One isn't quite accustomed to how it moves, is one? It's like those wind-up toys all the children had, racketing along with no mind of its own. One can't expect the horses to find the way for you." 

"One often can't do that in any case, my lady."

"I suppose you're right. Still, it's rather exhilarating to swoop along the road without horses, isn't it? And now we're here in London!" Honoria, Duchess of Denver and a twentieth-century woman with her own motor-car, released the door latch and climbed out, holding up the tails of her duster.

A moment later the house's front doors burst open for her hostess. Mirabelle, Countess of Severn-and-Thames, strode down the steps with dignified speed, a footman following. "Honoria, dear! I'm delighted that you could visit me this year." Mirabelle kissed Honoria's cheek and straightened to gaze at her with godmotherly concern. "You're looking splendid, at last. A little color suits you." She allowed the footman to hand her a cane, which evidently served as an accessory, for it matched her black-and-gold overdress and never touched the ground. With it, she waved the footman at Honoria's motor-car, with Franklin and the heap of luggage. " _What_ is that contraption that brought you here, and will it fit into the stables?"

Honoria ignored this as the pleasantry it was, and allowed her hostess to babble them both past the imposing front door of the Severn-and-Thames town house. "...you'll need a new gown or two for evenings, I'm sure..." In the entrance hall, Honoria raised her eyebrows at two black-and-gold Chinese screens amid the staid Georgian proportions. Mirabelle _would_ make up her own fads and fashions. "...and Lucinda in particular -- you'll meet her soon -- has gone mad for this year's narrow skirts, even though they suit Sylvia better..."

A waiting footman took Honoria's duster and gloves and windblown hat, and Honoria gave him a nod of thanks while Mirabelle continued onward. "...but we'll shop tomorrow. Today you should have a chance to rest. I've put you in the green suite, in the family wing. You'll have to tell me if it suits you." They passed through a drawing room with bamboo-and-lotus-figured walls surrounding a clutch of delicate, lacquered chairs and cabinets and tables, all rather lost under the high ceiling and Palladian windows. "Tell me, what have you been doing with yourself at Denver?"

Honoria leapt into the tiny pause in Mirabelle's flow of speech. "Of course I'm delighted to be here. Duke's Denver is much the same as ever, fortunately, but both my sons are being tiresome in their different ways, and Mary's just at the age where she can't help but have sulks. I'm quite ready to leave them to themselves for a bit and be amused." Honoria gazed about the transformed room. "Mirabelle, this looks like the Royal Pavilion, except you've better taste than to gild everything. Are you feeling artistic again?"

"I'm indulging my whims. What else? Now do tell me where that horseless carriage came from."

"The Delage is a whim of mine, I suppose," said the Duchess. "I was very fond of Mortimer, you know, but he wouldn't have a motor-car at Denver. Men are so old-fashioned. Gerald is just like his father, and he wouldn't have anything to do with my buying one, either, so Peter brought it over from France. He says he might buy another for himself." 

"That boy is the height of absurdity," said the Countess, fondly. "He's your son, bless his eyes, very like you. Now, come meet my niece, Elspeth, who married into the Tremayes, and her daughters. They've been livening up the place with their gossip and their beaux, and they both play the piano. You'll like them." 

# # #

Honoria found that she truly enjoyed being in London, ready to pay morning calls on friends of Mirabelle and her own, ready to shop for clothes, more than happy to attend concerts and exhibitions and the opera. She'd heard accounts of fantastical Russian ballets in Paris with even more fantastical music, but London's West End had its own theaters and music in plenty. The late duke had preferred to visit London in the autumn, so this new springtime, when she had income and time of her own to spend as she pleased, was a revelation.

By dinner the first evening, it was evident to Honoria that one of Mirabelle's whims, this year, was to make sure that her two great-nieces acquired suitable husbands. It was only reasonable that the Misses Sylvia and Lucinda Tremaye, returning single from their recent Grand Tour of the Continent, should soon marry English husbands. When the household gathered in the drawing room just before dinner, Honoria discovered Mrs. Tremaye as a mother somewhat overwhelmed by her daughters. She'd pictured them as two schoolgirls like Mary, barely old enough to come out, but she found instead two poised young women. Lucinda's charm and bright eyes and sleek dark hair (piled high to make her taller) drew the eye first, but Sylvia, three years older, had the height to wear this year's fashions gracefully, and her pinned-up brown curls and ivory skin put Honoria in mind of an Italian painting. She couldn't remember which one. 

They both, it was true, played the piano daily in dutiful practice, Lucinda favoring Schumann and Chopin, and Sylvia experimenting with everything from Bach to unnamed floating melodies and curious variations on ragtime. Lucinda willingly spent her evenings attracting a flock of admirers, while her elder sister often had an air of abstraction at social events, as thought she were always waiting for something. Honoria wondered if Sylvia hoped one of Lucinda's young men would turn around and notice her. Which one might it be?

A few days later, they attended the opera in a large party that filled the Severn-and-Thames box at the Royal Opera House. Honoria had ordered an up-to-date Paquin evening gown that looked very much like an ornate blue lantern, with a bunch of blue feathers for a hat. She felt silly, but it flattered her fair coloring and (she hoped) somewhat disguised any silver in the fairness. She noticed, too, a few other lantern-shaped gowns in the surrounding boxes. She was not silly. She was _au courant_. 

Lucinda and Sylvia, in maidenly pastel lace and pearls, sat with two would-be suitors invited by the Countess and Mrs. Tremaye to round out the party. Lucinda sparkled with excitement at young Mr. Hadwick, all chatter and big eyes and occasional trills of laughter. Sylvia, after a few words of introduction to Lord Berfield, watched the orchestra below while he told her about a performance of _La Bohème_ he'd seen. "It's a sad moment. Mimi dies, and we never know if the Bohemians are thrown out of their garret or not." Sylvia smiled and nodded at him, but her eyes behind her painted silk fan met Honoria's unbelieving glance, and they shared a moment of carefully silent mirth.

Honoria recognized the feeling. Mortimer might have said something like that about _La Bohème_ , if he'd ever seen it. She'd liked him well enough, but there had been no romance in their marriage, either before or during. Perhaps Sylvia would be more fortunate.

The Earl and Countess settled into their plush chairs only after the Countess had paused at the front of the box long enough to allow everyone in the theater to appreciate her hat and overdress adorned with gold birds flying through crimson flowers, the whole set off by the Severn rubies. As she sat down, Honoria stretched forward and whispered to her, "You're magnificent already. Why are you being subtle about it?"

Mirabelle was well past the need for silent laughter. She gave Honoria a none-too-ladylike chuckle and a satisfied nod. "I've never had time for subtlety." She waved to a glittering party of opera-goers in the next box but one. "Isn't that Lady Salisbury?" Her sharp perusal of the boxes continued until the house lights dimmed and the conductor came out. Sylvia sat up then, alert, and Honoria remembered that the Tremayes must have seen operas by Richard Strauss, perhaps even this one, in Vienna.

Lucinda and the men sat back, ready to be entertained, but Honoria watched everything, hoping to see what Sylvia was waiting for. The audience hushed, the conductor raised his baton, and the opera began with a leaping horn fanfare.

After a tumultuous overture, two singers were revealed on the stage in an 18th-century bedroom, trading melodic sweet nothings like lovers on the morning after, which indeed they were enacting. The Countess gazed blandly down at the singers in their staged intimacy, at the tumbled bed visible in the stage set. "Goodness, is that meant to be what it looks to be?"

"Probably not," said Lucinda. "Opera never is." 

"I imagine," said Honoria, "that it's supposed to be what it looks like, except that it's not." She had, after all, seen operas in which two characters exchanged cloaks and thus convinced everyone else on stage, but not the audience, that they were each the other. She didn't explain, because the singing became clearer, and revealed unmistakably that both singers were female.

"Oh," said Sylvia, in a careful whisper, "how very old-fashioned of Strauss. I wouldn't have expected anything like this after _Elektra_."

The Earl asked, "Is it supposed to be shocking?"

"Of course not," said Lucinda, and Mr. Hadwick smiled at her before his gaze went back to the stage.

"Well, yes it is," said Sylvia. "I think." 

"Nothing's ever as shocking as real people," said Mirabelle.

Lord Berfield put down his opera glasses. "I don't think it's shocking. It's all make-believe, after all." 

The music settled down a bit as breakfast was brought in for the stage lovers, and a waltz, almost completely unlike anything heard in 18th-century Vienna, sounded from the orchestra. As Honoria watched, she felt the false stage picture and the dissonant music flow together in the perfect enactment of a thing that could not be true, but which in being false illuminated humans and love. She wanted to laugh for the wordless joy of understanding it, but she squeezed her hands tightly together around her closed fan instead, to let herself hear the music.

# # #

It was soon after that evening that the Countess decreed she would hold a soirée musicale at Severn-and-Thames house. "For," she confided to Honoria one afternoon, "Lucy has plenty of beaux but none of 'em serious, and Sylvia's too serious herself. Showing off their music should even it out a bit." It was true that Sylvia often spent her afternoons, after the day's callers and before the evening's social engagements, in the music room with her collection of frighteningly advanced piano scores. Honoria reflected that only a truly besotted young man, or a musical soul mate, would not be put off by semitones and Impressionist tone poems.

That same evening, an hour or so before they were to go out, Honoria found Sylvia at the piano, playing a series of cascading arpeggios that refused to reach a cadence. The piece became troubled and loud, and quieted again, and ended on chord that was subtly wrong and completely without emphasis. 

"What is that?" she asked, piqued that she couldn't hear the ending as an ending.

Sylvia's hair was already dressed for the evening, in shining light brown curls pinned with white flowers, but she wore only a thin satin underdress that shivered when she looked up with a start. "Oh, Aunt Honoria. I didn't realize you were listening. It's a piano 'novelty' by Ravel. He calls it _'Jeux d'eau.'_ "

"Aha! It's like running water, with ripples and currents." The image appealed to Honoria, but the music still puzzled her. "I liked it when you played it, but I don't understand it. Except the ripples and currents, perhaps, and they're not real, but they sound almost real, in a musical way... Is it music?"

Sylvia gave a husky, near-silent laugh. "It's an early piece from Monsieur Ravel. I'm not sure what he thought it was, really." Sylvia glanced down at herself, at bare white arms and pale satin clinging to her legs. "I should go back up. Maggie will have laid out the rest of my things by now." A faint pinkness showed in her face. "Ahhh, that is, no one is ever downstairs at this time of day unless we're entertaining, and I like playing when it's quiet."

"I'll have to go up to dress soon, myself," said Honoria. "Thank you for putting up with me, when I don't know the new composers. I've one music-loving son, and it's interesting to hear the kind of music he talks about."

"Does he play Ravel's music, or anything else from Paris?"

"He's heard it, and I think he tries it out, but when he plays for the family it's Chopin études or Bach. And, now that I'm thinking of it, what has the Countess said to you about the musical evening she's planning for you and Lucinda?"

"She did talk to us about it, but I'm sure she wanted to do it anyway." Sylvia stood up, her dishabille displaying an elegant figure, and waved both hands at the music room's new and extremely avant-garde black-and-white wallpaper. "Auntie's been having a whim about redecorating, and what's the fun of that if no one sees it? I'm not sure a musicale won't put suitors off, instead of attract them, but Auntie will bring in at least one musician famous enough to impress everyone, and I'm looking forward to that."

# # #

As it turned out, the Countess engaged an opera singer, so that her great-nieces might play accompaniments to fashionable arias. Two days before the soirée, Madame Augustina Schoder rehearsed with the two young women, after firmly closing the music room door to everyone else for the hour. The muffled sounds from within seemed to indicate a great deal of German language hilarity between songs. 

The guest list included, of course, a number of potential husbands without regard to their musical sensibilities, as well as Mirabelle's music-loving friends. Honoria could only hope that Sylvia and Lucinda would still have suitors at the end of the evening.

Madame Schoder, gowned in the stiff Viennese style, took her place in the curve of the immense black grand piano to excited applause from the crowd seated on Mirabelle's spindly lacquer chairs. Lucinda, fetchingly gowned in cream satin, took her place at the piano for two arias from _Carmen_. The performance, in Madame's famous voice and with fiery accompaniment, inspired enthusiastic clapping and a "brava!" from Mr. Hadwick. 

This was followed by Chopin waltzes from Lucinda showing, Honoria thought, a precise and graceful style. Then Sylvia, glowing in apricot gauze and silk ribbons, seated herself with a flourish and played a piece by Ravel that was named as a waltz, but which sounded like an Impressionist tone poem. Honoria hoped it was meant to be a tone poem, and she noticed that half the room, including Madame Schoder, seemed to be following it closely, and the other half was still wondering where the waltz was, with fidgeting and disappointed expressions. Perhaps the piece was meant as a joke on the Parisian -- and London -- bourgeois. That would be exactly like Ravel, with his "nursery songs" and ragtime bits.

Finally Madame Schoder, with Sylvia still at the piano, sang two Puccini arias with fervor and portamento, and ended with a showpiece from Massenet meant to dazzle all suitors everywhere with the operatic Dulcinea's vocal fireworks, delivered with perfect technique. Everyone applauded, some politely and some with bravas and tears, and then it was time to stand up and chat with one's neighbors, and presently to follow the Countess out to the supper buffet in the dining room.

Mrs. Tremaye and Lucinda started to circulate together among the guests still in the music room, but Honoria noticed that Sylvia stayed behind with the singer. Their conversation over the piano scores seemed to fascinate both of them, until Mrs. Tremaye called and Sylvia joined her to be introduced to two new young men and a viscount who was not quite old. It was evident to Honoria that Sylvia was not fascinated, but merely pleased in a drawing room way, to make their acquaintance. She wondered if Mrs. Tremaye or any of the men knew the difference. 

Honoria, ignoring the exodus to supper, circulated over to the abandoned piano and the singer, who was leafing thoughtfully through some of the piano scores that hadn't been used. "Madame Schoder? Didn't I hear you sing Oktavian earlier this month?"

Bright dark eyes met her query. "You are kind to remember, my lady. It is a fascinating role."

"It is, and you sang it beautifully. Is Strauss a favorite of yours?"

Madame smiled. "Strauss, and also the musicians now working in Vienna, it is all most exciting. Have you heard--" With a faint waft of rose perfume and a creak of her boned bodice, she waved the sheet of music and leaned over the piano keys, then obviously stopped herself. "Forgive me. I am sure this moment is not a time for trying out music." 

Honoria remembered how Peter had talked about Paris, when he'd come back from France. "Please tell me -- I've heard a little about the music that's new in Paris -- so much like the Impressionists with the paintings of water all vague and shimmering, except not looking wet, you know, but more floating." Madame's expression went to politely confused. Oh, dear, no one else ever followed a conversation in quite the way Honoria did. "That is, if I'm not a nuisance, do tell me what the newest music in Vienna sounds like."

The singer nodded, earrings swinging against her powdered neck, and frowned in thought. "My lady, the music in Paris is soft. It is new, but it is like dawn. The music now in Vienna is hard, like sun bursting through clouds. It casts shadows."

Madame's English was clearly strained by finding words for what she wanted to say, and Honoria feared that her own German, unlike Sylvia's, lay too far in the past to be useful. "That's... most expressive about how it affects a listener. Is it difficult to perform, I mean, the technique?"

"It is not the voice that has difficulty, but the ear. One must hear the new tonal mode, not only the new notes, to sing it with precision." Madame made a gesture Honoria had seen from other singers, laying her fingers on her long, unadorned throat.

"Oh." But not all music was sung. "So then, must the pianist also hear the new harmonies, to play them well?"

"Miss Tremaye, that is, Miss Sylvia, has some understanding of these things. It is pleasant to work with her."

The Countess's voice interrupted them. "Honoria, Madame Schoder." Both of them turned to her, Honoria disappointed at losing the Viennese singer to Mirabelle's hostess duties. "Won't you join me for supper? And, Madame, could you put up with meeting a few more of my friends?"

Honoria followed the two of them into the supper room. She noticed Lucinda and the Viscount sitting together, eating salmon patties from the same plate. At another table Sylvia and Mrs. Tremaye, wineglasses in hand, ignored their finger-sandwiches as they listened in seeming fascination to two young men talking and gesturing, probably re-enacting some sporting event. As the Countess sailed by them with Madame Schoder and Honoria in her wake, Sylvia looked up, and Honoria saw her eyes meet Madame's for a moment.

# # #

After the guests had departed, the Countess and Mrs. Tremaye retired to an upstairs sitting room, undoubtedly to discuss the Tremaye daughters' social strategies. Honoria wandered back into the music room.

Sylvia was at the piano, humming and playing one bit after another of something full of spiky melody lines and unresolved harmonies. She looked up as Honoria approached to look over her shoulder, her hands still poised on the keyboard, a dissonant chord fading. "It's a piano sonata by one of the Viennese composers," she explained, as Honoria came to look over her shoulder. "Madame Schoder brought me a copy today." 

The music, as Sylvia worked through it, had no discernable tunes and was plainly absurd, but Honoria felt as though it were trying to explain itself, phrase by phrase. "It's very much ahead of the rest of us," she said, when Sylvia paused, "but it's building itself bit by bit, isn't it?"

"That's true," said Sylvia. "Tell me, how would you compare this with _Der Rosenkavalier_ , the other night?" 

"It's not nearly as shocking as that fantasy of Vienna."

"Musically, or," Sylvia gave her a tiny smile, "otherwise?"

"Oh, otherwise, of course!"

Sylvia laughed in a low chuckle. "I rather felt you weren't saying everything you thought about the Marschallin and her young lover."

"I wondered what I should feel in her place."

Sylvia's eyebrows rose.

That wasn't at all what Honoria had meant to say. "That is, the opera puts new wine into an old bottle, and it's cracking and bursting open. That sonata --" she glanced again at the score "-- Alban Berg's sonata, is new wine making its own shape."

"It's not pretty-pretty, I suppose." Sylvia sounded out a series of notes. "Neither is this." It was one of the not-quite-waltzes from _Der Rosenkavalier_. "Or this." She played a series of chords that expressed the tragic, never-fulfilled longing of Tristan and Isolde. Such silly lovers, Honoria thought, with a memory of herself hearing it at nineteen, but the chords sent a pang through her nevertheless, of yearning for unknowable loss. 

"Or this." Sylvia's fingers sketched a languorous melody, one gesture, then another, then a third, building very differently than the sonata. This was rising tension, phrases flirting with incomplete release and gliding into higher, almost visceral, tension. 

"I haven't heard that before," said Honoria, feeling flushed. 

"I forget if it's been played in London. It's from _Salome_ , also by Strauss. Very shocking indeed, I promise."

"Musically?" asked Honoria. They both giggled.

"Sacrilege and sin, sin redoubled. And banned by the Lord Chamberlain, of course."

"There was a fuss about it -- the play it was based on, I mean." Mortimer, bless him for a Philistine, had never minded, or even noticed, any of his wife's books. "I read it because the censors were so wild against it." Honoria smiled. "Or against Oscar Wilde, really, I expect. I thought it was saying, or meant to be read to be saying, that indulged passions are dangerous, but I wondered what Salome saw, in her passion, that the libertine Herod minded so much?"

Sylvia gave her a conspiratorial look. "What indeed? What kind of passions, too?" She played a series of major chords that peaked in a crashing dissonance, resonating through Honoria's senses as passion breaking all bounds. "Salome's music is polytonal, but what does that mean?"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it?" Salome's passion couldn't be put into words, which was why the music, in its expression that bypassed words, was so shocking. What did Sylvia think she was talking about?

Sylvia said carefully, too carefully to be casual, "There's a late-night club I've been invited to, by musicians I knew in Vienna and Munich who've come to London. I warn you, they're very shocking people. It's likely to be decadent and avant garde and... and musical. You could hear the new Viennese music for yourself. Would you go there with me?"

"It doesn't sound like a place for a well-bred young lady," Honoria said, trying for a conspiratorial air. It sounded colorful and lively and not stuffy. It sounded like Paris. "Is this a new Bohemia?"

"It could be. If we go there, we'll find out." She stared defiantly at Honoria. "I'm twenty-five, not eighteen. Mother and Lucy don't know anything about this. I probably shouldn't go there, but I want to."

Honoria thought for a moment, and realized another of her new freedoms. "D'you know, if I go there with you, you'll have a chaperone. A duchess, no less. How do we get there?" 

# # #

They reached the Grotto of Delphi, as it was called, by descending a staircase off Sackville Street into a basement cavern decked out in artistic Greco-Roman splendor, set about with pillars and furnished with tables, chairs, divans, and a small orchestra. Colored-glass lamps cast dim twilight. Woodwinds, and someone declaiming musically in German, sounded through the room. 

Once inside, greeted and welcomed by the Oracle herself (who wore Grecian draperies of the most advanced kind and a sleek turban festooned with spangles), they were found almost immediately by Madame Schoder. "Miss Tremaye. Your ladyship. I am glad you came to the club." She focused on Sylvia. "I, and others, hope you will play something with us." She gestured with a hint of theatricality at the singer and cluster of instrumentalists on the stage. "May we hope?"

"I should very much like to, unless..." Sylvia turned to Honoria. "Would you object if I perform here? We may hope that Madame will sing, also."

Sylvia and Madame looked at each other, and Honoria understood now that they must have met before, surely in Vienna. How much of Sylvia's year and a half on the Continent had been spent with Bohemian artists? The Grand Tour should have taken her to well-born hostesses, friends of the Severn-and-Thames family and the Tremayes. What had Sylvia been doing instead? What had she learned?

One answer was hers for the asking. Honoria smiled at Madame. "I would welcome the chance to hear your voice again, or Sylvia's playing, or both. Please." 

Madame said to Sylvia, "If you will play Anton's songs, I will sing. But first," she nodded to Honoria, "my lady, shall we find seats and be comfortable?"

Honoria looked around at the little tables and noted a few lantern-shaped outfits like hers, and a number of outrageously fashionable hats, and at least one pair of Poiret's gauzy harem trousers, worn by an extravagantly jeweled young woman with a feathered and jeweled turban. There were also various attempts at Classically draped gowns. Clearly, license reigned here. How very shocking and avant-garde, she decided, with a tiny frisson of glee. Perhaps next year's gowns would all be Classically-draped trousers.

Madame guided them to a table in the multicolored dimness near the stage, from which a singer continued to serenade an ailing moon upon heaven's dark pillow. Feeling herself in a strange country, Honoria selected at random among astonishingly varied drinks and artistic morsels of food, all brought by maidens in white somewhat-Greek drapery that resembled last year's floppier tea gowns. She sipped at her bittersweet drink, tasting lemons and raspberries. The German declamation died away on a sung murmur of "deathly sick moon" and a flute trill.

Madame conferred in a low voice with Sylvia, who set aside her wine and a dish of lemon and ginger cakes. "Aunt Honoria, Madame Schoder has learned a number of songs from one father of the new music in Vienna. Will you excuse me to accompany her?"

Honoria nodded, sipped more deeply from her "cocktail" and felt the room become more colorful even as she swallowed. This was decadence. Good. "I'm sure I'll be delighted with it."

The two of them stepped up onto the stage and announced a performance of Anton Webern's songs on poems by Stefan George. Chatter, half puzzled, half anticipatory, welled up from the inhabitants of the Grotto and calmed into an expectant pool of silence. Sylvia arranged a sheaf of music paper at the piano, and a white-clad maiden, this one wearing a properly draped chiton, appeared to turn her pages. Sylvia began to play chords and figures that seemed, to Honoria's ears, not unpleasing but... atmospheric. Nature in music. Music like nature, perhaps. 

Madame's voice joined the piano, in a melody that hovered and swooped and fluttered in untuneful but hypnotic sequences, without any of the vocal flourishes one expected at the opera. Nevertheless, the song captured one's thoughts. One felt Bohemian. Honoria ate a ginger cake and drank the lemon-raspberry cocktail and felt the music paint her into the landscape of an imaginary world.

By the time the songs finished she felt like a water lily floating on a pond. It seemed no great matter when Madame Schoder, after acknowledging the scattered applause from the Grotto audience, raised Sylvia's hand to her lips to bestow a salute on it. There was more applause before they stepped down from the lit stage into the multi-hued darkness again. Sylvia turned toward the table where Honoria sat, but on the other side of the piano the Greek-gowned maiden waited with the music folder, and Honoria thought she saw Madame gather up the maiden and trade a kiss for it. She blinked, and they had both disappeared into gloom.

"That was remarkable," said Honoria to Sylvia, who sat down and raised her wine glass for a thirsty gulp. "I can't describe it." She almost remembered what it felt like, but now the music had ended and she might lose the knowledge.

"I don't think anyone can describe music, really. All the reviews and discussions and essays are about how people react, not the music itself." Sylvia sipped again, more daintily. "What did it make you think about?"

With giddy relief, Honoria remembered the imaginary landscape. "I was in a different world. I've suffered a sea-change, into something rich and strange." Sylvia's eyes widened, but she said nothing. "Do you feel like that," Honoria asked, "when you're playing the music and hear it as a whole? Like Alice going down the rabbit hole and growing bigger and smaller?" She pushed the dish toward Sylvia. "Have some of these little cakes." 

Sylvia laughed. "Sometimes I do feel like that." She picked up a lemon biscuit, but did not eat it. "Music is something of an escape from the drawing room and the suitors, that's true." She looked up at Honoria. "I don't think Lucinda feels the same, but has it ever been like that for you?"

Honoria tried to remember. "Music was different when I was younger. Melodies were more... decorous." She finished her drink, thinking about what she meant to say. "One never heard shocking Viennese dissonances, if they even existed. I'm hearing it now for the first time." Should she ask? She had to. "How did you find the musicians in Vienna?"

Sylvia also took time to decide on her words. "Mother and Aunty were disappointed, you know, that I didn't attach a count or baron or at least a wealthy parvenu, while we were on the Continent. Instead, I met someone at a salon, and she introduced me to a music salon in Vienna, and they knew musicians in Munich and Paris." She broke the lemon biscuit in half and ate one of the halves. "I want to go back to Paris and study piano with Madame Boulanger. I don't think I want to marry, not yet."

Ah. They might be talking about the same thing. Honoria waved at one of the Greek maidens and asked for a fruit plate and two more of the lemon-raspberry cocktails. When the girl had departed, she said, "Would it be difficult to have a husband?" She'd had Mortimer and three children and everything she'd thought she could want at Denver and sometimes in London... but she hadn't traveled the Continent, hadn't lived in Paris, hadn't studied music for herself.

"I couldn't marry and then gad off to Paris for years on end, could I?"

"Not unless your husband wanted to gad off to Paris, too. Or lived there already."

"None of the men I've met ever make me feel as rich and strange as music. Lucinda likes them. Let her marry Lord Berfield or Viscount Colchey. I won't be 'hurting her chances' if she marries someone!"

"I see." Clearly, Mrs. Tremaye or the Countess had been talking to Sylvia. The question wasn't something they could ignore forever. But, all the same... what of this underground world, this music and the land of enchantment?

A plate of figs and pomegranate chunks, and two more of the pink-tinged drinks, appeared at the table. A small orchestra had assembled itself on the stage. Languid, twisting melodies drifted from a flute and oboe, vying with strings, rising and floating. Honoria handed one of the cocktail glasses to Sylvia, who tasted it and sipped again. "Thank you." 

They sat for a few minutes, listening and letting the music speak for itself. After a harp arpeggio flew upward like a bird and dissolved into the musical mists, Honoria nodded toward the stage. "Is this the music you want in Paris?" With the taste of bittersweet raspberry-lemon, sounds were again painting visions for her in the darkness, of vague sunshine and slow, serpentine warmth. A summer afternoon, perhaps.

"I heard it in Paris. It's Debussy's music, inspired by a poem." Sylvia sliced open a fig and turned it inside-out into her mouth. She swallowed as if it were an oyster, while a clarinet slid briefly through the music. "That's what Paris feels like, sounds like, to me." 

"It's more feeling than sound." Muted horns carried the music for moment, and merged back into flutes and violins in sinuous, timeless melody. Was this decadence? Hearing a description of concert pieces from one's son wasn't the same. And, she was sure, this was not a feeling she might share with Peter. Honoria looked away from Sylvia's mouth, with difficulty. 

Three tables away, a dimly multi-colored, lantern-shaped frock and the jeweled outfit with the harem trousers leaned together on a divan, two young figures gazing into one another's eyes, hands clasping, leaning into a kiss over their twined fingers. They heard the music.

The warmth rising in Honoria felt utterly unlike anything in her marriage. She picked up a chunk of pomegranate, its seeds winking in the light from the stage. When the requisite six seeds had passed her lips, she said, "What music are you looking for? A polytonal chord?"

Sylvia raised her eyebrows and then abruptly giggled, loud and free. "Not unless you're looking for John the Baptist." She plucked a pomegranate seed from the plate and bit down on it. "What do you, not Salome, want?" 

"Perhaps instead... a thousand and one nights," Honoria said. "I don't suppose Scheherazade was only telling stories during all those nights with the king of Persia. Do you?" 

"I do not," said Sylvia. "What stories will you tell me?"

"What music will you play for me?"

The orchestra on stage sighed and murmured to a close, merging gently into silence before applause began pattering from the listeners. 

Sylvia glanced toward the stage. "I'll give you music like that," she said, and then leaned closer to Honoria.

Her mouth tasted of figs and raspberry liqueur and pomegranate seeds. 

# # #

Not much later, they climbed back up the stone staircase into the world of London, where the cold air of a spring night should have woken them, and didn't. They donned their capes and held hands to keep the cold away until the footman waiting with the Delage motor-car was summoned.

On the way back to the house, while the two of them were bundled together in the long seat behind the footman, Honoria had an attack of conscience. Mindful of the driver's ears, she said, "I know you're worried about marrying, but remember that I'm ready to worry about my children's marriages. It's a different perspective."

"Oh," said Sylvia, visibly evaluating various nuances. "Tell me about them, a bit."

Honoria smiled. "They're still rather young men, one younger than you. You'd do well to ignore both of them, I'm afraid. Gerald is a very proper stick, and Peter is more romantic than the stars in the sky, and neither of them has the smallest particle of common sense. They're both hoping to be married within a year."

"To particular women?"

"To what they each think their particular woman is. I don't think for a moment that they know what they're doing. So, my dear, I believe you are right to take your time in choosing."

"I shall certainly think about what you've said," said Sylvia, but she did not let go of Honoria's hand amid the confluence of their capes and skirts on the padded seat.

# # #

Honoria was not entirely surprised when she heard a subdued knock on the green suite's bedroom door half an hour later.

"I told Maggie to go to bed, when we left for the Grotto," said Sylvia. Her hair was already down in a mass of loose brown tendrils. "She has to get up early enough to bring me breakfast. It's not fair to keep her up hours later than usual."

"How interesting," said Honoria, feeling suddenly breathless. "I told Franklin the same."

Sylvia came inside and closed the door carefully and completely, so the green lilies painted on it merged into the painted wallpaper on either side. They were in a private garden together, breathing with each other, close enough to feel one warmth merge into the other. "Do you feel the same about me without Debussy's music playing?"

Honoria took her hand, caressing it with both of her own. "'What a cold little hand you have. Let me warm it for you.' I remember a _great deal_ of music about Paris." Sylvia shivered at her touch, and then her hand turned to clasp Honoria's. Arousal was like an unresolved chord, unknown but waiting.

Sylvia sighed and put both arms around her, pulling Honoria into a soft, lush body under the ridiculously thin, barely padded layers of silk and cotton lawn that made up her newest gown. "I'd like to kiss you again, and undress you myself."

"I've been hoping you would. May I do the same?" Their mouths touched, wet and slow, and Honoria's heartbeat rang in her ears as they discovered new worlds together. Amid the kisses, fingers walked up and down her back, opening up new sensations as Sylvia unfastened everything Honoria had needed half an hour to put on. Eventually the beaded blue silk and various undergarments rustled to the floor. 

A pile of apricot silk and gauze followed, and a stiffly embroidered green bed cover joined them. Honoria kissed bared shoulders and breasts, touching and feeling kisses in return, letting herself feel and want in a way she'd barely remembered was possible, until tonight.

# # #

Honoria woke up to dawn in the windows and Sylvia disentangling herself from the bed linens. "Is it that late?" Night time visitors within the house, one knew, must return to their own bedrooms in time to begin the new day without scandal. 

"Maggie will bring my early tea in an hour or so." 

They were, for a moment, still enclosed in a green garden. "Will you play for me again?"

Sylvia snickered aloud and stood up, gloriously naked in the dawn light. "I wish I could stay and play _everything_ with you. Again."

"Yes indeed." They traded looks of silent satisfaction, before Honoria said, "I do, you know, want to hear you play the piano. As well."

"Yes," said Sylvia, sobering, "That's all I want, aside from you. I really do want to go back to Paris to study. This summer, if I can."

Honoria said, before she thought about it, "You could go there with me. I could spend a summer, a year, in Paris." She and Sylvia stared at each other, eyes wide. "I could. I can. No one will tell me not to." She scrambled out of the bed and touched fingertips to Sylvia's mouth. "Don't answer yet. Think about what it would mean."

"Oh." Sylvia gathered up her gown and clothes. "I will. And I practice every afternoon, in the music room."

"If music be the food of love," said Honoria mock-solemnly, "I'll see you at breakfast."

# # # # #

**Author's Note:**

> List of music pieces described during the story but not completely named:  
> At the opera:  
>  _Der Rosenkavalier_ , Richard Strauss, 1911  
> In the music room:  
> "Jeux d'eau," Maurice Ravel, 1901, for solo piano  
> Soirée Musicale:  
> "La Valse," Maurice Ravel, 1908, for solo piano  
> "Quand la femme a vingt ans," aria from _Don Quichotte_ , Jules Massenet, 1910  
> Later in the music room:  
> Piano Sonata Opus 1, Alban Berg, 1911, for solo piano  
> Dance of the Seven Veils, and final scene of _Salome_ , Richard Strauss, 1905  
> In the Grotto of Delphi:  
>  _Pierrot Lunaire_ (Part One), Arnold Schoenberg, 1912, voice and chamber ensemble  
>  Five Songs for Voice and Piano on poems by Stefan George, Anton Webern, 1909  
> "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune," Claude Debussy, 1894, for small orchestra  
> In the bedroom:  
> Line from the libretto, by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacose, of _La Bohème_ (Act One), Giacomo Puccini, 1896. The not-entirely-literal translation is mine.
> 
> Many thanks for useful and constructive beta comments to Percygranger, Megan Kent, and Charlotte Churchill


End file.
